[windlessstorm]

This makes me wonder how the information is stored in nature? Like how the characteristics of the particles and fields and all the interaction rules are are stored or embedded?

If we know how much bits nature is taking to store some data and how it is storing, can we use this knowledge of structure to somehow compress the data and store it more optimally? Or is nature have most optimal storage ever?

[improbable22]

Statistical mechanics is basically the study of how nature stores information. Or at least, what this means for certain kinds of physics.

This article is about relatively new things, but if you rewind 100 years, you find people thinking hard about this in simpler contexts. Gibbs is the big name, who essentially re-wrote thermodynamics (the study of heat, which until then had been thought of as some kind of invisible fluid) in the statistics of microscopic particles. This often involves counting the number of different possible states, for instance of all the atoms in a gas. Gasses whose molecules have two atoms (like N_2, compared to He) have larger heat capacity precisely because there are more different ways that these bi-atoms can be oriented, i.e. more information is needed to write down their states completely.

The older, thermodynamic, description is in a sense an optimally compressed representation of this microscopic picture. It keeps only what little information is visible to giants like us, who cannot see the individual atoms.

[abdullahkhalids]

Scientists don't really ask the question that where nature stores the laws it operates under. This is because the laws of nature (such as general relativity) are human conceptions - we don't think these laws are true laws of nature, only approximations to them. If the actual laws of nature are different from the ones found in science textbooks, they probably they have different storage requirements. For instance, right now physics theories use a number of different constants, such as the masses of all the massive particles (electrons, quarks, neutrinos). But we think the true laws of nature will require a fewer number of constants to define, or better still no constants at all - the numbers will emerge automatically from some consistency requirements. It seems pointless to go looking for places where nature is storing the electron mass when there might be no such place. In other words, don't confuse your map of reality with reality itself.

[chatmasta]

Along these lines, also see the Anthropic Principle [0] which states that "observations of the universe must be compatible with the conscious and sapient life that observes it."

[0] [RABBIT HOLE WARNING] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle

[AstralStorm]

Also silly unfalsifiable argument without any external reference frame. It might well be that the universe is ultimately incompatible with sentient life, just incidentally appears as such in the current timeframe.

The simpler version of it is "God's will".

[icebraining]

Like how the characteristics of the particles and fields and all the interaction rules are are stored or embedded?

That's an interest thought; I assume the storage is the particles. An electron acts like an electron because it's an electron. You'd have to change the particle itself to get it to act some other way.

That said, we are already exploring some ways to store information like nature: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_digital_data_storage

[windlessstorm]

So that's where my question is. Can we store the complete information an electron carry optimally, like in a space smaller than the electron itself? This leads to the question: is this possible to save the current state of universe in a space smaller than universe without loosing any information?

[goldenkey]

Well, for starters, the holographic principle hints at the sheer level of symmetry in the state space of the universe -- so redundant that a whole dimension can be shaved off. (3d space -> 2d space.)